By the time I got to AP Euro via a rarely used stairwell near the staff parking lot, Mr. Anthony had already begun taking roll. He paused briefly to frown at me over the manila folder, and I cringed in silent apology as I slid into a seat in the back.
When he called my name, I mumbled “here,” without looking up. I was surprised he’d actually called me. Usually, teachers did this thing when they reached my name on the roll sheet: “Ezra Faulkner is here,” they’d say, putting a tick in the box before moving on down the list. It was as though they were pleased to have me, as though my presence meant the class would be better somehow.
But when Coach A paused after calling my name and I had to confirm for him that I was in the room even though he knew damn well that I’d walked in thirty seconds late, I wondered for a moment if I really was there. I glanced up, and Coach A was giving me that glare he used whenever we weren’t hustling fast enough during practice.
“Consider this your tardiness warning, Mr. Faulkner,” he said.
“So noted,” I muttered.
Mr. Anthony continued with roll. I wasn’t really listening, but when he got to one name that I didn’t quite catch, there was a perceptible shift in the room. A new student. She sat way on the other side, near the bookshelves. All I could see was a sleeve of green sweater and a cascade of red hair.
The syllabus was nothing surprising, although Mr. Anthony apparently believed otherwise. He talked about what it meant to be in an Advanced Placement history course, as though we all hadn’t taken AP US History with Ms. Welsh as juniors. A lot of the guys on tennis didn’t care for Coach Anthony, because they thought he was a hard-ass. I was used to strict coaches, but I was quickly realizing that without any other athletes in the class, Mr. Anthony was just plain strict.
“You should have done the summer reading,” Mr. Anthony said, as though it was an accusation, rather than a fact. “Medieval Europe: From the Fall of Rome to the Renaissance. If you felt such an assignment was beneath you, then you’ll be rearranging your plans for the weekend. You might even consider your weekend plans to be, ah, history.”
No one laughed.
The Roman Empire: 200 B.C.—474 A.D., he scrawled on the board, and then raised an eyebrow, as though enjoying a private joke. There was this horrible stretch of silence as we tried to figure out why he wasn’t saying anything, and then, finally, Xiao Lin raised his hand.
“I am sorry, but I think 476 A.D. is correct?” he mumbled.
“Thank you, Mr.—ah—Lin, for displaying the barest level of competency in reading comprehension,” Mr. Anthony snapped, correcting the date on the board. “And now, I wonder if anyone here can tell us why the phrase ‘Holy Roman Empire’ is a misnomer . . . Mr. Faulkner, perhaps?”
If I didn’t know better, I would have thought that was a sneer on Coach A’s lip. All right, let’s call it a sneer. I got that he was disappointed I couldn’t play anymore, but I’d sort of hoped he wouldn’t be a jerk about it.
“It only applies after Charlemagne?” I offered, inking over the letters on my syllabus.
“That’s a community college answer,” Coach announced. “Would you care to rephrase it and try for a UC school?”
I don’t know why I said it, except maybe that I didn’t want to take crap from Coach A for the rest of the year, but before I could really think it through, I’d leaned back in my chair and replied, “Yeah, okay. Two reasons: One, the ‘Holy Roman Empire’ was originally called the Frankish Kingdom, until the Pope crowned Charlemagne the ‘Emperor of the Romans.’ And two, it wasn’t holy, or Roman, or even an empire. It was really just, like, this casual alliance of Germanic tribal states.”
I’d never really shot my mouth off in class before, and I instantly regretted it. I usually had the right answer when I was called on, and my grades were good enough, but I wasn’t what anyone would consider brainy. I’d just done a lot of reading and thinking over the summer, because there hadn’t been much else to do.
“Enjoy your weekend, Mr. Faulkner,” Coach sneered, and I realized that, instead of getting him off my back, I’d made him want to get back at me.
I’D NEARLY FORGOTTEN we were on Pep Rally Schedule until I was halfway out the classroom door, thinking it was break, and someone tapped me on the shoulder.
It was the new girl. She clutched a crumpled class schedule and stared up at me, as though I’d somehow given her the impression that I was the right person to talk to on her first day. I wasn’t expecting her eyes—deep and disquieting and dark blue—the sort of eyes that made you wonder if the skies opened up when she got angry.
“Um, sorry,” she said, glancing back down at her schedule. “First period is supposed to end at nine thirty-five, but the bell didn’t ring until nine fifty—”
“It’s the pep rally,” I told her. “Break is canceled and we go straight to third.”
“Oh.” She pushed her bangs to the side and hesitated a moment before asking, “So, what do you have next?”
“AP American Lit.”
“Me too. Can you show me where that is?”
Ordinarily, I could have. On the first day of junior year, I’d even stopped to help a few confused-looking freshmen in the quad, who’d stood gawking at the maps in the backs of their day planners as though they were stuck in some sort of incomprehensible labyrinth.
“Sorry, no,” I said, hating myself for it.
“Um, okay.”